June 2021 - Parks & Recreation - 50

OPERATIONS
Essential Operations for an Essential Summer
By Kelley Freridge

t the American Camp Association (ACA), we think about
health, safety, risk management and quality in the camp setting every day. ACA has released its CampCounts 2020 Report,
a study that focuses on the policies, practices and procedures
of camp operations for managing and mitigating spread of the coronavirus
(COVID-19). Park and recreation professionals and camp staff are reviewing and updating their plans daily as summer approaches.

PHOTO COURTESY OF AMERICAN CAMP ASSOCIATION

We're fortunate that we learned
a great deal from last summer
and the more than 3,000 day and
overnight camp programs that
served communities - often functioning as essential care for frontline workers and families in need
of childcare. Since March 2020,
ACA has focused on how we think
about health, safety, risk management and quality. Our Field Guide
for Camps covers implementing
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) guidance in
the camp setting and is available

50 Parks & Recreation

for free to all individuals serving
youth in any way at bit.ly/Camp
FieldGuide.
We encourage you to take some
time to download the field guide
and consider how the recommendations outlined in the resource
might be implemented in your
program and facilities, and with
your staff. ACA's Field Guide for
Camps was developed with information from publicly available
sources, including public and private entities, non-governmental
organizations and professional as-

Camps that have
implemented strict, layered
mitigation strategies have
been able to safely operate
in person while mitigating
spread of COVID-19.

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sociations, as well as subject matter experts in each area covered by
the field guide.
CDC guidance provides the
foundation of every applicable area
of the field guide and sets the guiding principle for camp operations:
the more people a camper or staff
member interacts with, and the
longer that interaction is, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spread.
This concept informs all areas of
the field guide, but also informs the
nonpharmaceutical interventions
(NPIs) that are core to operating
in-person programming this summer. We now know that camps that
have implemented strict, layered
mitigation strategies - including
wearing masks, cohorting, physical
distancing, pre-screening, cleaning, maintaining healthy facilities,
proper handwashing, running programming outdoors as often as
possible and leveraging ventilation
strategies when indoors - have
been able to safely operate in person while mitigating spread of
COVID-19.
If you're interested in exploring more of ACA's findings from
summer 2020, we encourage you
to download the CampCounts 2020
Report, which can be found at bit.
ly/CampCounts2021. The report
highlights how NPIs were used in
both day and overnight camp settings - and tested at select programs.

Kelley Freridge is Chief Marketing
Officer for the American Camp
Association (kfreridge@acacamps.org).

http://www.bit.ly/CampFieldGuide http://www.bit.ly/CampFieldGuide http://www.bit.ly/CampCounts2021 http://www.bit.ly/CampCounts2021

June 2021 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2021 - Parks & Recreation